Surfing the net and I come across an article entitled Leadership 101: How to be a successful leader. OK, I’m game. I do this for a living, let’ see what others are saying.

The article goes on to cite a survey In a Robert Half International survey, 76 percent of workers said they don’t want their manager’s job. Hmm, I thought we were talking about leadership? Now we mention manager….Let’s read on. While you might not covet your supervisor’s job, chances are you do want to move up the corporate ladder at some point in your career. Prepare yourself by starting to sharpen your leadership abilities. Now we have the word supervisor in the mix – umm, is that person a manager or a leader? and then the article goes on to say – Following are tips on successfully modeling the actions and habits of the best managers: WELL WHAT IS IT? ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT LEADERSHIP OR MANAGEMENT? ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT A PERSON OR A POSITION? A ROLE OR A RESONSIBILTY?

And herein lies the problem. While we generally toss the terms and concepts around somewhat interchangably Leadership and management are not synonyms. Let’s go back to Omaha Beach for a moment. Or to Juno Beach where the Canadians landed on D-Day. I have never read an account of the acts of managment that ocurred on the beach that morning.I have read about leadership. OK, maybe battle is too dramatic.

Consider John Kotter at Harvard who wrote that leaders set direction, align resources and motivate people. But managers plan, organize and control. Others will say leaderhip is about change for better results. Management is about consistency for better results. Tastes great, less filling. You get the point. There is a difference.

There is no doubt that the two must be intimate allies and not arch enemies as  once heard a speaker say. But for better understanding I think we must be more precise and not so lazy about the wording.

By the way here is what the article went on to say: Become a first-class communicator, listen better (umm, isn’t that part of communicating), have a strong moral compass, build a strong internal network, and be flexible.

Good advice for any human really. And yes, leaders and managers are well-served to do these things but where is the budgeting thing if we are talking about managing, for example? The article does itself, and you, a disservice by getting lazy about the wording.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2012 at 10:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.